


It Still Changes

by rolameny



Series: Destiny fics [9]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 16:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20492081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rolameny/pseuds/rolameny
Summary: Jolyon and Uldren had been a great team. The best. They'd get giddy with it sometimes, bringing back stories, treasures, after-action reports. But the Uldren he knew is dead. The Uldren now — Jolyon stays away from him.You could have him back,a voice says in his head. A voice not his own.





	It Still Changes

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Everything Stays](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ1DljkFwxg).
> 
> Some lines of this fic deliberately parallel lines from the game -- the [Nothing Left to Say](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/transcripts/nothing-left-to-say) mission, the [Free Part II lore card](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/free-part-ii), and the [In the Garden lore card](https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/in-the-garden).

He stops next to a boulder to reshuffle his gear, leaning his rifle up against a long stripe of quartz. His pack's weighing heavier on the left than the right and it could foul his aim in a pinch.

_Care for your gear now and it won't betray you later_, he thinks to himself, in his old mentor's voice, the one he always uses to be stern with himself.

In the same voice, he hears,

_You could have saved him, you know_.

Jolyon's hands go still on a half-empty case of bullets. _Yeah, I know_, he tells himself. It's nothing he hasn't thought to himself before. Nothing that hasn't spilled out of his mouth when he's made the mistake of drinking with Petra.

He swings his backpack on again and picks up his rifle, ready to move on.

A skink darts out of the grass under the rock. Its teeth, sharp little needles, flash in the sun.

—

Jolyon's hunting Scorn, clearing out the city. He and Petra have developed their system: he scouts. Reports targets, leaves 'em for the Corsairs if he has to, takes 'em down himself if he can. He tags the bodies for burning before they can rise up, eyes vacant as bullet holes, and rush him again.

He's a sniper. A long-distance man. The goal's for the enemy to never realize where he is. Especially now he hasn't got a spotter by his side.

Uldren — Jolyon forces himself to not shy away from the thought — Uldren was a good spotter. Incredible knife fighter. Jolyon could sink all of his attention into his work and know with a certainty nobody'd get close enough to touch him. Just leave himself to Uldren, who wouldn't let him down.

Now, he scouts even more carefully, fiddles with his Supremacy to eke another handful of yards out of its range, and memorizes every bolthole carved into the bedrock of the Dreaming City.

He's perched in a tree standing over a low waterfall — the roar and gleam of the water will disguise his rifle's retort and distract from the gleam of his scope. Downstream, a Scorn captain and its crew fight a pack of Hive thrall. He'll give them time to murder each other before he picks off the survivors, save himself the effort and bullets.

A voice in his head says, _Remember how well we worked together?_

Jolyon frowns. An unseen cricket in the tree sings, notes rising like a plea.

They had been a great team. The best. They'd get giddy with it sometimes, bringing back stories, treasures, after-action reports. But the Uldren he knew is dead. The Uldren now — Jolyon stays away from him. Far away.

_You could get him back_, the voice says again.

That's not Jolyon. That wasn't his thought.

The Garden — it affected Uldren more than him — but he's been _dreaming_ of it lately —

Jolyon clears his thoughts, breathes in, out, easy. He sits up from his rifle, hands relaxed on the stock.

The cricket sings, keen.

Another thought floats across his mind: _All you have to do is want it. And you want it so much_.

_Ahamkara_.

The cricket's song cuts off.

Something appears on the branch in front of him: bigger than a cat, with a cat's forelegs, birdlike back legs, a long serpentine neck. Like someone forgot what a griffin was.

"Ahamkara," Jolyon says, out loud this time, polite. His heart beats too hard. 

It smiles. There are so very many teeth in its smile.

_You were made for each other_, it says in his head. Using Uldren's voice. Jolyon shudders. _I was made to help you get what you want_, it adds, in a less-familiar voice.

"No thank you," Jolyon says out loud. It takes two tries: he has to force the words through a dry throat. He isn't his Queen, he doesn't have the wit to dance with dragons.

The ahamkara's tongue flickers. Its long tail rises from the branch it's sitting on.

_You want so much_, it says, sinking again into Uldren's voice. _You want this_.

Its tail wraps around Jolyon's wrist.

—

The strike team's got Uldren in chains, cuffs on his wrists and ankles, secure enough even his clever fingers couldn't get him free. He'd have to use that silver tongue. Sweet-talk them into letting him go, convince them he's sane.

But his eyes are dull, and he doesn't say anything.

Jolyon met them at the extraction point. Petra wouldn't let him go in with the team. Hard as quartz, sometimes: but she wasn't wrong this time. Jolyon's hands go cold looking at him.

Uldren rubs his eyes with his cuffed hands, frowns. Like he's asleep or underwater. Jolyon wants to wake him up, to bring him up to air.

Halfway to the Prison, Jolyon can't take it any more. He moves through the shuttle, frowns at the Corsair sitting across from Uldren with a gun in her lap till she moves.

Jolyon sits in her place.

"Uldren," he says, voice rough. Watches for a flicker of recognition in his shadowed eyes that doesn't come.

Petra's going to snap at him for it, but — Jolyon puts a hand on Uldren's, reaches right across to him like he's done a thousand times before. Uldren's hand is hot, too hot against Jolyon.

"Uldren," he tries again, willing his voice not to break.

Uldren's eyes lift to Jolyon's face. Lower to their hands. Lift again. He mouths, silent and confused: _Uldren?_

And then he says, voice a bare scrap of breath, almost inaudible against the shuttle's engines: "Jolyon?"

Jolyon's heart stops for a moment. His hand tightens on Uldren.

"Uldren," Jolyon says a third time, a prayer or a spell. His throat hurts with how much he's feeling. "I thought — I don't know what I thought. What happened to you?"

Uldren smiles all of a sudden and it's like flying a jumpship above a planet on its nightside and coming around to hit the terminator, a line of light breaking over the dark.

"It doesn't matter what happened. I came back," he says. "I came back to you."

He leans as far forward in the shuttle seat as his bonds will allow. His smile's so bright. His eyes are so empty.

Jolyon jerks back.

He falls out of the tree.

His back scrapes the trunk all the way down. His ass hits ground hard enough to jar his tailbone.

Got his rifle, though.

The ahamkara glides down after him on wings Jolyon doesn't think it had before.

_No?_ It says, right into Jolyon's mind. _Not that one?_

"Not any of them. Not from you." It comes out harsh, too harsh, it can't show him Uldren like that and then expect politeness from him.

_But you're hardly likely to find another ahamkara to help you, not with so many Risen around_, it points out. Its tail wraps around its forelegs tidily. Its sharp smile seems more present than the rest of it, somehow. It's hard to look away.

_You want it so much. Your prince back. Your partner. I could feel you from miles away, dear. We could just… erase all this. Give you another shot. How often do you need more than two?_

Never, is the answer. Not for years. But.

"No," he says. It wouldn't be him. It wouldn't be real. It would — it would be a betrayal of the whole City and his Queen.

But mostly, Jolyon can't stand to see Uldren a puppet again. Not of the Garden's, not of the ahamkara's. Not of his.

He staggers to his feet, somehow manages to scrape his palms raw against the roots of the tree behind him as he does. Takes his gun, takes his pack.

The ahamkara watches him go, tail twitching back and forth, back and forth.

—

He should tell Petra. He should tell the Techeuns, at least Shuro Chi.

He doesn't.

Jolyon doesn't keep secrets. Everyone knows it. He's practically famous for it, for the stories he spins out of everything he does that isn't classified by the Crows. And even that goes straight into reports, straight to the top.

But this — if he tells people about it, _everyone_'s gonna know about it. It'll become part of the mythos. Jolyon Till the Rachis, Crow, sniper, storyteller, sucker.

If he doesn't tell anyone, if he lets this stay a secret, he can deal with it. He can get over whatever desire the ahamkara's smelling on him like bad cologne. He can do this.

He keeps on with his scouting missions, stays in the Dreaming City. The city will soothe him if he lets it. Jolyon watches water hurry, hurry, hurry off the edge of cliffs, down into the mist. Stray leaves hurry with it. A particularly unathletic fish. Jolyon wonders if it'll get transported back up along with the rest of the water.

He slopes along a rocky path, far out at the city's edge, far enough he's never seen anyone else here, Awoken or hostile. A stream cuts through it, framed in nodding grass and flowers like little purple stars.

An eel flashes through the stream, bright as crystal in the water.

And a voice says in his mind, _Uldren would like this view_.

He wouldn't, Jolyon immediately thinks. He'd only like it because Jolyon found it and nobody else knew about it.

_Uldren would like it here with you_.

There's a thought to make him laugh with despair — and when he does, he notices the sly echo in the thoughts, like they're not coming from inside his own head.

For once his rifle's disassembled in its case on his back. Jolyon's hand goes to the knife at his thigh.

_Feeling so hostile? We could just talk._

"No. No thanks. I'm not interested." He should have been thinking about how to convince an ahamkara you don't want its wishes, not moping. Some Crow he is.

Something flashes again in the water. Jolyon starts walking again.

_You could have saved him. Isn't that what you wanted?_

"I wanted to be his partner." The words rip their way out of him. "Just us, no secrets. He never needed anything else. Not before—"

He snaps his mouth shut too late. So he puts his head down and walks faster, trying to get away.

The ahamkara's voice keeps up with him. _Partners? You were, for a time. Is that what you want back?_

Jolyon bites his own lip, hard. Too angry to look where he's going, he slips on the curling edge of the stream, and his boot lands _splash_ in the water, filling up. He gasps.

"What's wrong?" Uldren asks, grinning up at him. "Water not the right temperature for you?"

Jolyon lifts his boot out of the water, out of the stone channel in the Garden. It comes up with a ring of green algae around it.

"Not the kind of bath bomb I usually go for," he says. That sounds right — that's how they talk, the two of them, tossing the conversation back and forth like a ball.

Uldren looks good. Jolyon doesn't know why he wouldn't, doesn't know why seeing him shoulders relaxed, smile easy, eyes a bright clear gold, loosens something tight in his chest.

Rain slides down past them, and they huddle together under a canopy of leaves, jewel-green in the grey light.

Uldren pushes his hair behind an ear. Jolyon fixes on his nails. Are they longer than they were? He shivers even though the rain isn't cold — it's tropical-warm. Almost body temperature.

There's an uncomfortable thought.

"It's not letting up," says Uldren, looking critically towards whatever sky the Garden's got. "Shall we move?"

Jolyon, agreeing, reaches for a vine to haul himself up with. He wraps his fingers around them. They wrap around him.

The shape of a vine on his wrist, a sawtoothed coil, like a rope, like a — tail —

Jolyon stares at it.

"What's the matter, Jol?" Uldren leans in.

"This isn't real." His chest feels tight.

"The Garden? It's the realest thing I've ever seen. I can't wait to explore it all with you." 

Jolyon jerks at the vine. It leaves bruise marks on his wrist like words, sentences he can't read. "No. No," he says, and with an effort of will, pushes himself forward.

He's crouched thigh-deep in the cold stream at the edge of the Dreaming City, clutching one wrist with his other hand, chest heaving.

The eel flashes in the water, grows scaly legs, a carp's beard.

_Not like that? Partners exploring the Garden together? Your prince, untainted, kept safe by your vigilance?_

"I don't care how you paint it. You're offering a puppet. I won't take it."

The eel-dragon shrugs, sinuous, the motion following it all the way down its body. _But you want it_.

Jolyon wants lots of things. That doesn't mean anything. When he looks over to tell that to the ahamkara, it's gone.

—

He calls for a transmat up to a Corsair relay ship hanging in the sky above the city, bounces down again to his rooms. All of them, the Dreaming City reclamation crew, they have rooms in a building carved out of the side of a cliff, all high ceilings and polished marble with amethyst veins. Jolyon squelches through that elegance, leaving puddles behind him on the floors on his way to the bathroom. He pulls his tall boots off and pours them out, watching dirty water make its way down the drain. 

Jolyon skids in his wet socks on the floor, so he pulls them off and tosses them to land, with a wet thump, in the tub. 

Dry pants, clean socks, an old pair of boots worn down on the side of the left heel. Jolyon sits on his bed to put them on and abruptly has no idea what to do.

Uldren had never been in this room. In his old rooms, plenty — he'd burst in without knocking, wild-eyed and handsome, burning bright with the idea of another mission, another adventure, another treasure to hunt for their Queen. Sometimes Jolyon wouldn't agree, but usually he would, and then there he'd be again, loping half a step behind Uldren on their way down to the docks, his rifle in his case, ready to follow his prince wherever he'd take them.

Who's here now? Just the bitter leftovers of who they'd been. The Queen hadn't spoken to Jolyon in his mind like she did with her Techeuns and Petra sometimes. She left, and Uldren is gone in every way that matters, and here Jolyon sits, glaring at his shoelaces like they insulted his mother.

Jolyon makes a bad decision.

He gets his gear together, lets himself out, and goes scouting.

It's not hard to find the prince-who-was, not really. He wanders, but with no ship or sparrow he doesn't go far, and every Corsair and satellite they've got reports sightings of him. Jolyon doesn't even have to ask someone where he is, he can just check the map he's got access to under the authority of his position in the Crows.

Jolyon doesn't let himself go looking too often. He hasn't since the last time he and Petra went scouting together. It's not healthy to go staring at a scan of something you want when the scan's all that's left. It's not healthy to want too much, here in the Dreaming City.

He can't help himself now.

Jolyon perches high up on a hill, tucked into the lee of a boulder, and stares down through his Supremacy's scope. The prince-who-was sits on a rock in the sunshine, talking to his Ghost, a little purple star hovering in the air by his head. That Ghost's already brought him back to life a handful of times — any Guardian that meets him tends to kill him, and the City's not safe for the untried these days.

The Risen laughs, pushes his floppy hair out of his eyes, gestures to make a point. He and the Ghost turn to look out into the mist.

It hurts to see. Jolyon knew it would hurt to see. But here he is anyway, just like his mentor used to say, six feet of idiot laid out on the grass. Eating his heart out. There's an ease to the way the Risen moves, an unconcern, and it just means he's not tracking his periphery, he's an easy target, but all the same.

He looks like Uldren did, on the good days, when it was the two of them. Watching each other's backs. They could be at ease like that, together, because when they were facing each other they could each see over the other's shoulder, and Jolyon had his rifle, and Uldren his knives, and they were _untouchable_.

Till they weren't any more.

A figure settles on the boulder next to him.

Jolyon doesn't even flinch this time.

The ahamkara has a long body now, snakelike again. Two front legs it rests its blunt, horned head on, but no back legs, just a nearly endless tail that settles itself in loops over the rocks. Just like any lizard, sunning itself.

Its jaw drops open in a smile. _Hello again, Crow. Couldn't stay away?_

Jolyon doesn't answer. He concentrates on his breathing. In, out, easy. The prince-who-was is framed in his crosshairs.

_You want so much,_ the ahamkara says, its voice sliding around the registers till it lands on Jolyon's own._ Look at him. Bright as silver, unshaped. He could be anything._

_He could be yours._

Jolyon shudders. His elbows scrape on the ground under him. The awful thing isn't that the ahamkara's using Jolyon's own voice. It's that it's a thought he's had. To bring him in — to teach him who Uldren had been — 

To make a mockery of his prince, his partner. Dress a doll in a dead man's clothes and ask him to act.

"No," he says, and his voice is ragged. "Let him rest. He's dead."

_Are you sure about that?_

The hall echoes, vast, barely lit. Jolyon stumbles through the door and sees three figures. One on the floor. Two standing above it, holding firearms.

The figure on the floor props itself up on an elbow, a shaft of light hitting it for the first time on the face.

"So this is to be a reckoning," says Prince Uldren Sov of the Awoken, Crowmaster, Queensister.

He looks sick, sweaty, his blue skin faded to grey.

Jolyon stumbles forward. "Wait," he croaks. "Wait."

Petra and the Guardian half-turn to face him, keeping Uldren in their sight. Uldren's eyes go wide.

"Jolyon!" Petra's surprise is loud, overlapping Uldren's cut-off exclamation.

Jolyon barely feels it as he comes forward, into their deadly circle, into the line of fire. He drops to his knees next to Uldren.

He's never seen him like this. Uldren looks terrible, but he's hanging on to a sick, angry dignity. Won't let anyone see him at less than his best. Except for his sister, and Jolyon.

Jolyon's seen him sick, seen him upset, seen him drunk and hungover and doleful. Seen him without the armour of his perfectly arranged cape and hair. Seen him with his hair tied back to work on intricate circuitry, seen him in Jolyon's stolen sweatpants, long enough to cover his feet.

But Jolyon's never seen him like this.

"Uldren. What happened," he asks, and his voice breaks.

"_Uldren_ happened," Petra snaps. "To our City and to our Queen. Jolyon, get out of the way. There's justice to serve."

"Too long a tale for one sitting, Jol," Uldren says, his voice a cracked stone.

Jolyon lifts a hand to Uldren's face, brushes that white streak out of his eyes. His eyes are clear, not glazed with pain or confusion or the Garden's corruption. Only a little bloodshot.

He can't make himself let go, now he's touched Uldren. His hand curves around to the back of Uldren's skull.

"He has to pay. He has to answer for it all." Petra. The Guardian and their Ghost stay silent.

"We've all paid, Petra. Again and again." He doesn't look away from Uldren.

Uldren, braced against the ground on one arm, lifts the other to Jolyon. He clutches a handful of Jolyon's shirt.

"Jol," he says, and grins through cracked lips. "Always the best of us."

"Not me. That was you."

Jolyon leans down to press his lips to Uldren's, one last kiss. Jolyon forgets everything he meant to do or say, everything but this: Uldren on him, always running too hot, always putting a crick into Jolyon's neck. They've traded every kind of kiss, dropping them absently on their way out, taking their time when they could, learning each other, learning to surprise each other.

This time it isn't a trade. Jolyon gives it as a gift, his longing, his despair, everything pent up that he hasn't been able to show since Uldren took him by the wrist and pulled him into the Garden.

Then he pulls away and stands up, cold again where Uldren touched him, empty.

Petra looks at him in furious confusion. Uldren looks up at him like he's betrayed him. The Guardian is unreadable.

Jolyon's fists clench. He forces them loose, relaxed, ready.

"No," he says.

"What?" Petra and Uldren, simultaneous, their voices layered.

"No," Jolyon says again. There's a hole in his stomach, dropping straight through the bedrock to the mists. "No. I won't do it. I don't care how you offer it to me. I won't let you make him into something else for my sake. I won't let you make _me_ into something else."

Because he would be someone different if he accepted the ahamkara's deal. He might still look like Jolyon Till the Rachis, still have his own hair and eyes and rifle, but he wouldn't be _Jolyon_ inside, wouldn't be upright, steady, the person his people need him to be, the person he needs himself to be.

"Jol," says Uldren on the ground behind him, pleading. It twists into Jolyon's heart.

Jolyon closes his eyes.

"We all made choices. And we have to live with them. I don't get to choose again for him because I don't like how he chose. That's not how it works. Even for you, Uldren."

When he opens his eyes again, the light stings them, harsh on his eyes, making him tear up. He's lying on the hill next to his rifle, his hands splayed out, dirt under the nails.

The boulder next to him is empty, the ahamkara gone.

But there's a figure at the edge of the hill, sitting knees propped up, looking out.

At the sound of him rolling to his feet, the figure turns around.

The prince-who-was looks up at him, a grin breaking over the worry on his brow.

"You're awake! Good!" He stands up, still looking up at Jolyon, half a head taller than him.

Jolyon wants to take a step forward. He wants to take a step back. He stays rooted to the ground.

"Were you watching me?"

"Trying not to. You looked like you were having a nightmare. But it's not safe to sleep outside here, so we thought we'd keep an eye on you till you woke up."

The Ghost, a little purple star, does a roll in the air.

Jolyon looks out. It's a beautiful day — clear, bright, a low breeze rustling the grass. The City's spires rise white and clean in the distance, and somewhere on the hill, a cricket sings.

"What's your name?"

"Jolyon. Jolyon Till." He wants to offer up _Jol_ in the palms of his cupped hands like a gift. He wants to keep that hidden in a box buried six feet deep.

To distract himself, he asks, "And who are you?"

"We're still figuring that one out. I'd like to know, myself." The prince-that-was throws a fond look to his Ghost, and offers his hand to Jolyon to clasp. That familiar-unfamiliar hand, nails trimmed, lightning dancing under the skin of his palm in patterns Jolyon memorized long ago.

Jolyon breathes in, out, easy. 

"I'd like that too."

He takes the man's hand. It's hard until it's not, scar tissue breaking up to let the joint move easy again.

The distant cricket sings, and stops.


End file.
